Monday, April 20, 2015

By Our Representative
Top Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) rebel Yogendra Yadav, a psephologist whom many consider as one of the best political scientists of India, has sought to compare Delhi chief minister and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. He has gone on to compare the way in his he and his two colleagues -- father and son duo Shanti and Prashant Bhushan -- were expelled from the party's top political executive committee with "Stalinist purge".Making the comparison, which may sound weird to those familiar with the Stalinist regime, Yadav says he "strongly maintains that what is happening inside our party today has direct parallel with the Stalinist purges inside the Communist Party of the USSR in the 1930s." He has said this, and more, in a rather lengthy reply to Dinesh Waghela, AAP's national executive member, to the show cause action against him and his colleagues for their rebel meet called Swaraj Samvad.
Yadav does not stop here. He says, the way he and his colleagues were dismissed from the AAP's top decision making body reminds one of the "the kangaroo trials, expulsions, witch-hunts, character assassination, rumour campaigns and emotional theatre to justify such macabre acts", all of which characterized "the Stalinist regime."

Yogendra Yadav

Pointing out that, thankfully, "there is one difference – there is no Siberia for exile here", Yadav warns Waghela that he too would surely face a similar fate. He says, "I know you were once associated with the JP movement", hence he wanted to tell him "about a book that moved JP very much and led to his final disillusionment with Soviet Union."
"This was a book called Assignment in Utopia (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937) by Eugene Lyons", says Yadav, warning him, "The author, once an ardent fan of Stalin, describes how the infamous Moscow trials led to the purging of all the idealist communists that Stalin wanted to throw away. I do not know about your other two colleagues, but I sincerely hope that you do not end up as one of the many minions of Stalin described in that book."
Virtually paranoid by the manner in which he received the Show Cause Notice, Yadav appears to suggest this was also done in a Stalnist. He received it "around midnight on the 17th", he says, adding, "The alacrity with which the notice has been issued also invites questions."
Yadav says, "The manner in which this Show Cause Notice has been issued only confirms everyone’s worst suspicions. The timing of the communication and its contents were known to the media before it reached me. I received an email at 10:22 pm with an accurate summary of charges against me, while your email was sent at 11:45 pm and the hard copy reached after mid-night. That raises questions about the independence and intent of the exercise."
Moving over from Stalin to the Emergency under Indira Gandhi between 1975 and 1977, Yadav says, an "an undeclared emergency" prevails in AAP, where the Constitution has been set aside to make for one-person rule", even as justifying the AAP rebels' Swaraj Samwad held at Gurgaon on April 14 as being all about "a dialogue on the present state and future direction of alternative politics."
He claims, "Swaraj Samwad was not and was not presented as an official meet organized by the party. It is therefore pointless to call it 'unauthorized'. It was a gathering of volunteers, supporters and well-wishers of alternative politics. Given that it was an independent initiative, donations were collected from the participants for the event."